Credibility vs. Credulity

Climate catastrophists are distraught. The planet is headed for hellish doom, and few of its inhabitants care enough to alter its climatological trajectory in any meaningful way. The world has ignored catastrophist demands to decarbonize its economies, and rich countries, who have caused catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW), are not doing enough to help poor countries, who are its victims. Worse yet, the climate cult is crumbling, as its science-challenged leaders struggle to wage a crusade whose viability depends on propping up a scientific hypothesis that cannot stand on its own.

Catastrophist leaders have been unable to make a convincing scientific case for CAGW, or for the solution that they propose to avert it. Decades of advancing their scientific arguments (based on, e.g., flawed climate models, blatant manipulation of climate temperature data, shrill pronouncements of unsubstantiated alarms, followed by shriller, more frequent pronouncements of unsubstantiated alarms) have failed to win public support. So have vigorous attempts to appropriate scientific authority, coerce scientific consensus, and quash scientific debate. Their most ambitious intellectual efforts (incessant ridicule of skeptics, unrelenting vilification of dissenting scientists, and threats to imprison fossil fuel company CEOs, "climate deceivers," "doubt-sowers," and others) have attracted few converts.

According to catastrophist lore, America is the problem. Americans, catastrophists say, are in denial about the coming devastation and the science that predicts it. We dismiss the ominous tweets of President Obama (e.g., "Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: #climatechange is real, man-made and dangerous"). We chuckle when John Kerry likens global warming to weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), skeptics to Holocaust deniers, and alternative theories of climate change to the work of "shoddy scientists." We are blind to the self-evident truths of climate warming that catastrophists see, everywhere they look: storms, floods, droughts, fires, famines, terrorism, species extinction, heatwaves, cold snaps, allergies, and diarrhea, to name a few.

The climate cult is crumbling, as its science-challenged leaders struggle to wage a crusade whose viability depends on propping up a scientific hypothesis that cannot stand on its own.

America remains doubtful and oblivious. Just how stupid can we be, wonder alarmists? Bill Clinton thinks that such skepticism makes America look like "a joke." It's "almost like denying gravity," muses Joe Biden. Have Americans become even stupidersince Obamacare, which, according to Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber, relied on "the stupidity of the American voter" for its passage?

Indeed, American ignorance is said to be behind the watered-down Paris climate change accord. Thought to be humanity's last best chance to avert otherwise certain climate disaster, the agreement was not legally binding and fell far short of catastrophist demands. Catastrophist leaders blamed the US Senate. Had that body been willing to ratify a treaty mandating US emissions reductions, then Messrs. Obama and Kerry would have been able to persuade the other 190 or so countries to mandate theirs.

The US Senate, of course, is controlled by Republicans, as is the House of Representatives. That is, the US Congress is controlled by Republicans, for whom climate change is not the most important issue of their time. Congressional Democrats, on the other hand, having been duly indoctrinated by climate science that was settled decades ago, believe that CAGW is the greatest threat to humanity. Unlike Democrats, Republicans do not understand that fossil fuel is the scourge of the planet, abetted by the industrialization, capitalism, and democracy that threaten its very existence. This misapprehension is typified by so-called Tea Party Republicans — "flat-earthers" that Obama has no time to meet with — and "climate deniers," whose ignorance of science, according to Kerry, disqualifies them from "high public office." Presumably they would have been qualified had they attended the kinds of high schools and colleges where, Kerry continued, he "learned that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and it does so 24 hours a day."

We are blind to the self-evident truths of climate warming that catastrophists see, everywhere they look: storms, floods, droughts, fires, famines, terrorism, species extinction, heatwaves, cold snaps, allergies, and diarrhea.

Which raises the question: in this intractable climate change battle, who are the actual idiots? Where is the evidence that the catastrophist elite is any smarter than the Americans, even the ordinary Americans, that it obsessively derides and belittles? Instead of asking why America is unwilling to buy their planet-saving scheme, catastrophists should ask why their leadership has been unable to sell it. Why is it that — armed with daily evidence of omnipresent climate damage, the pressure of world opinion, the unrelenting propaganda of stroppy environmentalism, the vociferous endorsement of celebrities and journalists, and the lofty, unified validation of the world's climate scientists — such luminaries as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Al Gore can't make the case? They are losing to the Koch brothers and 40 or so members of the Tea Party!

Part of the answer is that those leading the climate crusade know the least about science. Otherwise, they would be able to explain climate change issues (such as the ongoing warming pause, the elusive tropical hotspot, the pesky Medieval Warm Period, the perfervid climate models, and the profligate green technologies that are "unproven or even illusory") in a way that Americans could understand. Dr James Hansen, the father of global warming, laments Obama's inability to articulate his policies to the public. “He’s not particularly good at that," said a discouraged Hansen.

There has been no measurable global temperature increase for 18 years of uninterrupted, anthropogenic belching of record quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. This is no small fissure in the CAGW theory; it is a gapping chasm that screams for resolution. Yet in May 2013, more than 15 years into the hiatus, as climate scientists frantically struggled to find an explanation of why the climate had not warmed as fast as everybody had anticipated five or ten years earlier, a clueless Obama asserted, "We also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or ten years ago." Three years later, still clutching a theory in need of serious modification, if not complete revision, he fatuously calls skeptics "deniers," as he remains in obstinate denial of the continuing warming pause.

After injecting over 100 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere since 1998 (one quarter of the amount that all humanity has spewed since 1750) with no temperature increase to show for it, one can understand how Americans, even ignorant Americans, would be skeptical of the CAGW hypothesis, and embarrassed by their president's habitual attribution of storms, floods, droughts, and terrorism to rising temperatures that have yet to occur.

Where is the evidence that the catastrophist elite is any smarter than the Americans, even the ordinary Americans, that it obsessively derides and belittles?

While they wait for the missing heat to appear, perhaps catastrophist leaders could use the time to explain the tropical hot spot (the signature of manmade warming, predicted by climate models). It too is missing — as is the rapidly melting Arctic ice predicted by Mr. Gore in his 2006 Academy Award winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. In accepting the Nobel Prize for his climate prediction abilities, Gore warned, "The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff," and "could be completely gone in summer" by 2013. But in May 2015, NASA reported that polar sea ice has been increasing, and is currently about 5% greater than the post-1979 average.

As an example of another precognitive gem, in his documentary, the doltish Gore proclaimed:

Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced — a catastrophe of our own making.

With only months until the bomb is scheduled to go off, the vast majority of the world’s scientists are no doubt in denial about ever having belonged to Al's "vast majority" club. Gore has become a laughingstock, and his credibility as a climate forecaster has vanished in the eyes of most climate experts — except for the catastrophist elite, who, as the case for climate hysteria crumbles before their eyes, step up the hysteria.

To Obama, "the scientific consensus" that he cites in his delusional rantings extends to an endorsement of his policies. It does not. That there is scientific authority attached to his policies is the bilge of political dogma. Unfortunately, it is this bilge that Democrats grasp as scientific truth, angrily rejecting divergent ideas as anti-science — promulgated, of course, by fossil fuel company shills. Skeptics should be prosecuted under the RICO Act, and coal company CEOs should be jailed "for all of eternity," says Robert F Kennedy Jr. Such is the preferred catastrophist method of settling science.

The climate cult has hijacked climate science for political purposes. Its hysterical claims of future havoc are disingenuously designed to scare the world into believing that eco-socialism is earth's only hope for survival. But such claims are based on the projections of severely flawed climate models. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admits that “there remain significant errors in the model simulation of clouds." There is observational evidence that “water vapor feedback” used by models to amplify the warming effect of CO2 is offset by clouds. Moreover, a recent study of the earth's albedo (the fraction of incoming solar radiation reflected back into space) found that "climate models fail to reproduce the observed annual cycle in all components of the albedo with any realism" and that the inability to accurately quantify the reflection of sunlight by clouds is "one of the major obstacles in climate change predictions."

(Clouds and water vapor make up 95% of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG); CO2 comprises only 3.6%, of which only 0.117% is manmade. Catastrophists claim that this miniscule quantity will significantly raise the temperature of the entire planet.)

Even the Tea Party would agree that, through the greenhouse effect, some level of manmade warming is expected. But where is the evidence for significant warming? It's what the Global Climate Models (GCMs) tell us, catastrophist leaders insist. That is, we are being told that 0.117% of atmospheric GHGs drives our climate, and the information comes, not from scientifc observation, but from GCMs that are incapable of faithfully simulating 95% of atmospheric GHGs. We are also being told that, because we wonder about all this, we are knuckle-dragging morons who may need to go to jail.

There has been no measurable global temperature increase for 18 years of uninterrupted, anthropogenic belching of record quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Climate cultists, in their reflexive attacks against those who question the authority of mystical climate models, demonstrate their own, and more fundamental, ignorance of science. As Thomas H. Huxley long ago noted, the true scientist "absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority . . . For him, skepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin."

Yet blind faith is the price of admission to the cult. Skepticism must be checked at the door. In a study reported by the Huffington Post and Mother Jones, the Tea Party is ridiculed for its skepticism. "Tea Party Members Really, Really Don't Trust Scientists," scoffs the Mother Jones headline. Based on the study sample, Democrats are the most trusting, with 83% of them believing scientists on environmental issues. Independents are next, at 63%, followed by mainstream Republicans, at 60%. The Tea Party comes in last, at 28%.

Only 1% of Democrats distrust scientists, boasts the report, compared to 43% of the Tea Party crowd. That is, Democrats are incurious, credulous lemmings, and 43% of the Tea Party seem to have passed high school physics. This would explain why the Tea Party has a few questions for climate scientists (who, after more than 30 years and untold billions spent on climate research, can't make their case), and why almost all Democrats have no questions at all.

To be fair, what could climate change gurus be expected to know about climate science? They are lawyers. For all Mr. Obama knows, the Stefan-Boltzmann Law is a racist statute, surreptitiously enforced in the South. Harry Reid's total knowledge of global warming is that the Koch Brothers are behind it; they "own that ugly tar stuff in Canada." Harry probably thinks that a CO2 absorption band is an undergarment worn by Al Gore when being theatrically elevated by a pneumatic scissors lift, as he was in An Inconvenient Truth.

John Kerry's closest brush with science was the clean room "bunny suit" that he donned at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to promote his 2004 presidential campaign. It was an experiment that went awry: photographs of the event portrayed Kerry as a goofy ass; the Kerry campaign blamed NASA for leaking them to the media; NASA's General Council ordered the removal of all images of Kerry's KSC visit from all NASA websites. Some might consider the removal to be censorship, while others might view it as a scientific contribution — since the display of John Kerry in a bunny suit would have scared dozens of promising space camp kids away from pursuing a career in science.

Climate cultists, in their reflexive attacks against those who question the authority of mystical climate models, demonstrate their own ignorance of science.

Nowadays, as an international climate change star, Kerry imparts climate science wisdom to world leaders, urging them to exploit "the small window of time that we have left in order to be able to prevent the worst impacts of climate change from already happening." At home, when he is not pondering time-travel, Kerry advises the American public about "shoddy scientists" and "extreme ideologues" whom we should not allow "to compete with scientific fact" — fact such as the idea that climate change is the "most fearsome WMD," that Canadian tar sands are a "hydrogen bomb," and that "those who continue to make climate change a political fight put us all at risk," all notions plucked from the meditative, objective, non-ideological mind of John Kerry.

In reality, climate cult leaders are boisterous dilettantes who are distressingly ignorant of science, except for its shameless use as bunting for their political ambitions. Hillary Clinton, who has even less scientific credibility than Kerry, is suddenly, and furiously, following his "small window of time" advice — now that she is running for president. She cannot explain why she thinks that only manmade CO2 causes global warming, that only catastrophic warming will ensue, or that only solar panels and windmills can stop it, but to win the Democrat nomination, she promises to install a half-billion solar panels by 2027, enough, supposedly, to power every American home. Depending on the polls, the theatrics of Gore and Kerry would not be beneath her. With Obama blaming global warming for droughts, and Biden blaming it for forest fires, Clinton could start showing up at tornado sites, wearing a green pantsuit and a whirling, funnel-shaped hat, spinning in proportion to her feigned outrage.

In the Democrat debates, let's just hope that no one asks Mrs. Clinton about the tropical hotspot. She might reply, after a grating cackle, that it's a nightclub on a Caribbean island where Bill goes to sate his albedo. The enraged catastrophist elite would attack the moderator, accusing him of being a denier, a climate-deceiver. "Go to jail, oil company shill," would cry the big government shills. On the other hand, at a Democrat debate involving climate science, only 1% of the audience would doubt her answer. Where credulity reigns, dilettantes have credibility.

About this AuthorSteve Murphy is a retired missile defense systems engineer and software developer living on top of Green Mountain in Huntsville AL, where he does a little consulting, plays the stock market and writes — mostly about economics, science, and American life. He can be contacted at sfm@hiwaay.net.

Comments

I have looked at some of the papers by John R Christy who is at the University of Alabama in Hunstville. These are very good. It's good to see some real scientist reports with actual data.

Thanks,
Scott

Fri, 2016-02-12 03:58

Steve Murphy

John Christy is an excellent scientist. His research is pretty straightforward and is based on publicly available, unmanipulated temperature data. He is often accused of making wild claims by climate cultists who have an unquestioned belief in the much wilder claims of highly flawed climate models.

Christy is one of the "shoddy scientists" that Obama and Kerry rail against. Others include Roy Spencer, Judith Curry, David Legates, Patrick Michaels, and Willie Soon. There would be a much greater number of so-called shoddy scientists, if research funding was available to discover anything other than what the likes of Obama and Kerry want found.

Glad you enjoyed the article,
Steve Murphy

Sat, 2016-02-13 16:30

Visitor

Thanks for the excellent article. I often visit the website http://wattsupwiththat.com/ for a less biased perspective. I have learned much reading Anthony Watt’s web pages.

I appreciate you noting the human caused component of CO2 at 0.117%. That should put it into perspective. Here are some other things I have learned during my education on CAGW.

1. CO2 is only 0.04 % (4/100s) of the total atmosphere.
2. The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is around 400 ppm (parts per million) There have been several times in the distant past where it was in the 4,000 to 5,000 range and up. The earth survived. Why all the panic at 400 ppm?
3. I have read figures that human generated CO2 amounts to between 5 to 7% of the total volume. The other 93-95% is generated naturally.
4. Plants need a minimum of around 260-280 ppm to grow. Below that they won’t grow very well.
5. The increase in CO2 levels have increased foliage around 11%. The increased levels have increased food supplies per acre, and amount under tillage has been reduced. The population projections say that there will be another 2-2.5 billion people on earth by about 2050. We are going to need to feed them. Lowering CO2 levels is not going to help that problem.
6. There have been times in earth’s history that have been warmer/hotter than it is now. The Roman Warm & Medieval Warm period were hotter than today. There were times in the distant past where it was 8-10 degrees Centigrade warmer than today
7. There have been several times in history where the temperature rose first, then increases in CO2 followed after. If CO2 is the prime cause of an increase in global temperatures how can this be?
8. During the 1970’s the big scare was the next ice age. Now it is CAGW.

Now, some comments on the “models”. They are a joke. Earth’s climate is a dynamic and chaotic system. The models are based on static systems. Almost all of the models have predicted more than twice as much warming as has been observed. Models are not science. They are a software approximation for a system. They don’t even predict the current hiatus in temperature. My answer to the climate catastrophists is get back to me when your models get anywhere near reality.

I also found Patrick Moore’s video interesting & educational. You can see it at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0Z5FdwWw_c

Steve C.

Wed, 2016-01-27 16:59

Scott Robinson

Dear Mr. Murphy,

I have heard about the 18 year pause in climate change predicted by the models. However, the past two years, I have heard that the world climate has been the hottest in recorded history. If I remember right, these two years, it has been 0.8-0.9 degrees Celsius higher. Is it just that the models predicted the change to be about 2 degrees higher both years? I know that the current doctrine is that if the temperature in 10 years is 2 degrees C higher it will be Apocalypse Now. I do still wonder how those dinosaurs survived in the much warmer globe that they lived in.

Stay Cool,
Scott

Sat, 2016-01-23 03:41

Skepticism is Scientific

"the past two years, I have heard that the world climate has been the hottest in recorded history"

Why does an air-and-space agency use ground-based temperatures--temps that are of notoriously low quality? Why have so many adjustments been made to that ground-based data? Why have NASA defied FOIA requests to justify those adjustments?

Meanwhile, satellite and balloon data show no statistically significant warming since 1997 or so.

Mon, 2016-01-25 17:15

Scott Robinson

"Meanwhile, satellite and balloon data show no statistically significant warming since 1997 or so."

This is why it's so annoying when people tell me when I challenge their global warming claims that 90% of scientists think that global warming is real. I then follow with the question, "Where's the evidence?" Then, all I get is the supporting evidence excluding the denying evidence that you showed in the quote above. This leads me to wonder, "who the hell are the scientists who claim reliable evidence for the warming given all of the evidence?"

This is why I conclude that environmentalists are just fundamentalists who want totalitarian control of the world and silencing of different voices (heresy). This is why the title to your comment is so good. Science is skeptical. There is always a "slight" detail that makes the "fundamental truth" untrue. Those adjustments you mentioned are to conceal the shortcomings and make the data agree with the "truth".